Youngest ever Asbo thug is jailed for life for murder of party peacemaker

Someone asked him: ‘Why didn’t you use your fists?’ and he said: ‘I wanted to stab him.’ He said it with no emotion, no nothing. Pure evil

Witness Sarah McKenna

Robert Heneghan became the youngest person to get an Asbo in 2004 when he terrorised his neighbours aged just 10.

After a decade of bringing misery to his home town, he has now been locked up for the murder of a party peacemaker.

Sam Bee, 19, tried to break up a fight Heneghan had started at a birthday bash last August. But Heneghan, also 19, launched himself at Sam, knifing the Good Samaritan in the chest.

Sam’s sister Sarah, 21, told Preston Crown Court: “Heneghan sort of looked at Sam with a bit of a smirk on his face.

“He calmly walked into the kitchen and just stabbed him. Sam just stood there, doing nothing.”

Witness Sarah McKenna added: “Someone asked him: ‘Why didn’t you use your fists?’ and he said: ‘I wanted to stab him.’ He said it with no emotion, no nothing. Pure evil.”

After he was stabbed, Sam asked the killer: “What have you done that for?” But he collapsed as he fled the party and died behind a nearby hotel.

Heneghan has plagued residents in Blackpool since he was at primary school, racking up a catalogue of 23 convictions.

He was handed his Asbo after being arrested three times in one week in 2003.

Police said they had to deal with him 43 times in less than six months for incidents including burglary, vandalism and threatening locals.

Heneghan was given youth custody for another knifing in 2009. On that occasion the victim survived.

The jobless yob denied Sam’s murder, claiming he did not mean to kill him, but a jury found him guilty and he was handed a minimum 19-year life sentence.After the hearing, the victim’s gran Dorothy Wells said: “Sam’s death has had a very big impact on me and my family. Sam was only 19 and his life has been tragically cut short.

“My life will never be the same again and I just have to take it one day at a time.

“I am now fearful of the way things have developed with knife crime which, to me, seems to be more commonplace.

“The people who use them appear to have no concern for people’s lives and aren’t aware of the trauma they cause to the victims and their families.”